Bye-bye Big Love family
 
By BILL BROWNSTEIN
The Montreal Gazette
 
We hardly knew ye, Bill Hendrickson. No sooner do we finally get to feel for the beleaguered patriarch, then he's gone. Say bye-bye to Bill and his extended brood as Big Love wraps Sunday at 9 p.m. on HBO Canada after five morally turbulent seasons.

Few gave Big Love a ghost of a chance of surviving when it first hit the airwaves in 2006. A show about a Godfearing Mormon family in Utah was taking over the time-slot previously occupied by a non-God-fearing mob family in New Jersey. The latter would be the Sopranos, led by Tony (James Gandolfini), who dealt with his demons by disposing of them - or their parts - in garbage Dumpsters and other innovative burial sites.

Tough enough to replace Tony and cronies Little Carmine, Patsy Parisi, Big Pussy and Johnny Sack. But to bring in a family that doesn't cuss, mainline, toke, snort or down quarts of hooch, let alone engage in graphic sex on screen or dissect enemies ... whoa ... that's some kind of tall order.

And yet Big Love has broken virgin ground - and not with a shovel - on the tube. It has taken most of us into a universe about as foreign as that of Charlie Sheen, who, too, practises a form of polygamy but dispenses with any religious rituals.

Props to the show's creators, Mark Olson and Will Scheffer, who spent three years researching Mormons and polygamy. They have not only emerged with some of the most original and intriguing plot lines to surface on the tube, but they have also managed to elicit empathy with sensitive portrayals of key principals.

No matter one's moral view of polygamy, one has to be moved by the plight of the hard luck Bill Hendrickson (fabulously interpreted by Bill Paxton), forever trying to keep his besieged family together. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't. It's a wonder that he hasn't taken to the bottle over the course of the series.

But stress has got to one of his three wives, Barb (the marvellous Jeanne Tripplehorn), who relented to the temptations of the grape and started tippling this season. Small bloody - sorry - wonder.

Not only must Barb share Bill with two sister wives, the increasingly unbalanced Nicki (Chloë Sevigny) and the well-meaning but hopelessly naive Margene (Ginnifer Goodwin), but add to that about a dozen offspring, some of whom are having to deal with hormonal issues.

And let's not even talk about financial woes or battles between Mormon factions. Or the unwell physical and mental states of the parents of Hendrickson and his spouses.

Hendrickson was harried enough trying to bed and keep the peace between his bickering brides and support his brood with his homeappliance stores, all the while trying to keep his polygamy - or "plural marriage," as he prefers to call it - story a secret. But then he had to throw his hat into the political ring and become a candidate for state senator. The good news is that he won. The bad news is that he won.

After getting elected, he decided to reveal all to his constituents about his penchant for a plural marriage. In retrospect, not the best decision. This didn't go down at all well, not with the non-Mormons and not with the Mormons.

And it got worse. To his horror, Hendrickson discovered that sweet little Margene was, unbeknownst to him, underage when he took her as his third wife. And as the series finale is about to unfold, viewers will learn whether the always earnest Hendrickson is off to the hoosegow for statutory rape.

And we can't forget Hendrickson's nemesis and brother-in-law, the diabolical polygamist nutbar Alby (creepily portrayed Matt Ross, aided by one of the scariest coifs ever seen on screen) - still much in the closet regarding his sexual peccadillos. Although Alby - son of the deceased unhinged prophet played by the unhinged Harry Dean Stanton - appears to have been done in and his cult of zealots broken up, he won't rest until he ignites the fires of hell under his arch-enemy Hendrickson.

So we wait with bated breath for Sunday's finale. (Maybe Harry Dean will rise from the ashes - anything is possible here.) And we wonder how HBO will ever manage to top this on Sunday night.

Then again, Charlie Sheen is available.

The search for Canada's worst driver comes to Montreal next month. And there should be no shortage of candidates.

Montrealer Dean Sibanda came up a little short in his quest for the coveted title last season. Sibanda, originally from Zimbabwe and occasionally uncertain on which side of the road to drive, finished fifth in the competition.

Canada's Worst Driver, the Discovery Channel's top-rated show, is now gearing up for yet another season of mayhem behind the wheel and is accepting nominations for this (dis)honour.

The show's producers will be in Montreal next month to meet potential candidates and to take spins with the most (un)worthy motorists.

To ensure victory, local candidates ought to consider impressing producers by taking them on a cruise on the wild side, through some of the city's most cavernous craters ... er ... potholes.

But this series is more than just about ridiculing wretched drivers in a quasi demolition derby. Those candidates who make the grade are shipped off to the Driver's Rehabilitation Centre, where they are taught etiquette and rules of the road. Even Sibanda managed to keep his licence after rehab.

"We take driver's training seriously, which means that when you leave the centre, you have truly improved behind the wheel," says the show's host/writer Andrew Younghusband.

"By helping the bad drivers, we're not only changing their lives - we're also changing viewers' lives. I know this because dozens of viewers have written me to say that they avoided accidents because of techniques they learned by watching our show."

Nominations for the next season of Canada's Worst Driver can be submitted now until the end of March. Email driver@propertelevision.com or phone 1-866-598-2591.

bbrownstein@ montrealgazette.com
 
MontrealGazette.com
Originally published March 18, 2011
 
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